World news in brief, 8/15

BEIJING — Tens of thousands of people were evacuated as Typhoon Utor thundered into southern China on Wednesday after shutting down the bustling Asian financial center of Hong Kong and sinking a cargo ship.

More than 60,000 people were evacuated in the city of Maoming in Guangdong province, while another 98,000 were moved to safety to the south on the island province of Hainan.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries on the mainland due to the storm, which was packing sustained gale force winds of 90 mph.

Helicopter search and rescue teams from Hong Kong and Guangdong province rescued 21 crew members from the Trans Summer, a bulk carrier, after it started listing in waters southwest of Hong Kong.

Algeria

Ex-energy minister denies corruption

ALGIERS — The former Algerian energy minister and one-time OPEC chief, Chakib Khelil, denied any role in a bribery scandal that led to an international arrest warrant being issued for him.

Khelil, who was in Washington D.C., told the newspaper El Khabar that as minister he acted only "to defend the interests of my country."

Algerian State Prosecutor Belkacem Zeghmati announced Monday the arrest warrants for Khelil, his wife and two children and a nephew of a former Algerian foreign minister.

The Algerian probe was triggered by an Italian inquiry into claims that oil company ENI and its subsidiary SAIPEM paid $256.1 million to secure a $14.6 billion contract with Algerian oil company Sonatrach.

England

Cat DNA from hair helps convict a killer

LONDON — Fingerprints are not the only thing that killers can leave behind — add cat hair to that list.

A British university said Wednesday that its DNA database of British felines helped convict a man of manslaughter, illustrating how the genetic material of pets can be used by crime scene investigators.

Investigators tapped the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, to identify the cat hair discovered around the dismembered torso of David Guy, 30, who was found hidden in a trash bag on a British beach in July 2012.

Detectives matched the hair to a cat belonging to the man's friend, David Hilder, but because the genetic material was mitochondrial DNA — which can be shared among large number of animals — the strength of the match couldn't be known.

Jon Wetton from the University of Leicester worked with doctoral student Barbara Ottolini to create a repository of cat DNA for the Hilder case. They gathered samples of mitochondrial DNA from 152 felines across England over a six-week period.

Only three of the samples obtained matched the hairs from the crime scene.

Hilder was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 12 years before he is eligible for parole.